Erin Hill

Aileen Wood
Cecily Greene
Janae Thompson
ENGL297

Putting Actions into Words: An Ethnography of A Scientific Writer

Introduction
Many scientists hate writing. They will conduct experiments and they will stare
through a microscope for hours at a time but they dread the very important writing
process that comes after. Scientific writing in its rudimentary form is a translation of
results set forth by one curious person in search to find answers to questions many of us
find mystifying. It reveals the methodology, the drawbacks, and the results of the
research conducted in a clear and succinct manner. Most importantly, it is the means for
a scientist to get his or her work out to the world to explain the origin of the subject,
its potential future, and why we all should care.
This ethnographic report aims to focus on what researchers need to know about
scientific writing through the perspective of an academic principal investigator
(scientific researcher) in the field of Psychology focusing on Behavioral
Neuroendocrinology. In our report, we will emphasize six major heuristics that aspiring
scientific writers should consider in their work context stated in chapter 15 of Solving
Problems In Technical Communication: 1) amount and quality of writing entailed and
expected, 2) nature of writing, 3) genres and rhetorical strategies, 4) approaches to and
processes for writing, 5) knowledge and skills, and 6) personal traits and qualities
(Johnson-Eilola & Selber). These heuristics would be applied through an analysis of
published papers, scientific protocols, two in office interviews, and observations of the
workplace. By using these methods and documents, we hope to enlighten and prepare
new or aspiring scientific writers who will delve in and embrace the scientific writing
process.

Research Subject and Location

As a group of young women with a common interest in science-based writing, we
thought it would be beneficial to interview a female principal investigator, Dr. Erica
Glasper. Dr. Glasper is an assistant professor of Psychology as well as the Neuroscience
and Cognitive science graduate program here at the University of Maryland, College
Park. Her lab explores structural plasticity in the adult and aging brain, its alterations
by experiences and hormones with a view towards understanding their functional
relevance. Her research is directed to interactions among rewarding experiences,
parenting, mating, hippocampal plasticity, and hippocampal function. (Glasper, 2017).
The hippocampus is an area of the brain that deals with memory. Therefore, her
findings contribute to research dealing with dementia, aging, and epilepsy.
Dr. Glasper has produced twenty-seven publications over the span of fourteen
years. Alongside these publications, she has written grants to support her research,
guided dissertations, and constructed protocols. Because of this wide breadth of
experience, we knew she would be able to highlight the pivotal aspects of scientific
writing and how to prepare and produce scientific documents. She shared this
knowledge with us through two in-office interviews located in her office in the Biology-
Psychology Building at the University of Maryland.

Data Collection Methods

Our data collection methods included the two aforementioned in-person
interviews, workplace observations, and the analysis of one of Dr. Glaspers published
reports.
The most crucial part of our data collection was centered around the in-person
interviews we had with Dr. Glasper. Because Dr. Glasper is an assistant professor and
the head of a Behavioral Neuroendocrinology lab, we knew that her time was very
valuable and we would have to start planning ahead to decide when we were going to
meet.
The planning of when and where our meeting would be began in mid- March to
ensure that we would have enough time to coordinate. We created a Doodle poll
between her and the four members of our group to determine the best time to meet.
Based on the times that each of us were available, we were able to divide ourselves into
two pairs. If we all met with her individually, it likely would have taken up too much
time and would not have been as conducive to our research, so going in pairs was an
optimal route. Two of us split up to interview with Dr. Glasper on March 28th and the
other two met with her on March 31st. Both pairs planned to spend an hour in her office
in the Biology-Psychology building, each prepared with four to five questions to ask.
During the interview, we asked any additional questions that arose from the
responses that Dr. Glasper provided. Thus, our interviews were semi-structured, a
format which has been found to yield more informations than a very structured
interview (Johnson-Eilola & Selber, 2013).
The goal of our research was to learn about her writing approach and process in
her particular research fields. We knew that she conducted research through her
Behavioral Neuroendocrinology Lab in addition to gathering references for her
publications, yet we ended up learning so much more. In order to ensure that we were
attentive to all that she had to share, one person did the majority of note taking while
the other made sure to engage interpersonally during the conversation. Utilizing these
roles was also a sign of respect because we never wanted Dr. Glasper to feel like we were
not interacting with her if both of us were both furiously writing the entire time. After
we finished asking the questions we had planned to ask and any others that came up, we
ended up learning more about her background and experiences as a writer. Research
and writing is something that she is clearly passionate about because of all the time and
effort she puts into it, although she wishes she could put even more time into her
writing.
In addition to the interview we conducted with Dr. Glasper, we did workplace
observations. There was no conversation occurring at this time, so the two of us in each
pair took approximately five minutes to take observational notes of her office. It was a
quiet and organized functional workspace where she displayed a number of things
including pictures of her family and her awards, accomplishments, and recognitions.
Following the interview and workplace observations, we could tell that Dr.
Glasper is very dedicated and proud of the work that she does. We decided to read one
of her recently published pieces, which will be discussed in further detail later on in this
report.
Throughout the process, including the planning of the interview and during the
interview, Dr. Glasper was very cooperative and willing to help our group. She was
highly responsive to the emails that were sent back and forth. During the interview, she
provided very detailed responses to our question that enticed a wonderful discussion.
In the end, time was a limitation in our data collection process. We gathered a
sufficient amount of information from Dr. Glasper, but we could have gone a step
further. If we were able to schedule a time to visit Dr. Glaspers lab and even see her
research assistants and her in action, it would have been a great addition. However, we
are satisfied from all that we gathered from our interactions.

Findings
The first in-person interview went very smoothly and uninterrupted. The second
interview, which occurred later in the week, also went very well as it provided a great
opportunity for a new findings with fresh pairs of eyes and ears. Dr. Glasper was very
thorough in her responses, so each pair left with a substantial amount of information.

Background in Writing
Dr. Glaspers development in her writing stems from a combination of her
undergraduate and graduate career. She attended the small, liberal arts-focused
Randolph-Macon College that was writing and speaking intensive. This institution gave
her a tremendous foundation as she pursued her education and even into her current
career. It was not until attending graduate school at The Ohio State University, however,
that she learned about scientific writing. She was able to combine what she learned in
boths levels of education to form the expertise that she has today.

Study Protocol
The specialization of Dr. Glaspers research and writings is neuroendocrinology,
so for lab work she commonly uses non-human subjects. Writing a study protocol for
animal use is typically the first thing she has to do before she can proceed. This study
protocol is sent to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) to be
reviewed and approved before she can proceed with research. In the animal protocol,
she must explain her research in less technical terms because the committee is made up
of both scientists and nonscientists. Therefore, she must write in such a way that any
one of the committee members would be able to fully understand her protocol. To do
this, she faces the challenge of pushing her scientific jargon to the side so that she can
speak in more plain language. She also has to ensure that she defines and explains terms
that a non-scientific person would not know. This causes the writing in the protocol to
be much more drawn out than it would be in any report she would produce. As a
scientific writer, this goes against her training because she is accustomed to writing in a
clear and concise manner.

Research & Writing Process

Dr. Glaspers writing process truly reflects the extremely busy schedule that she
and most other researchers have. She never has time to just sit down and write a
research article, so instead she will allocate herself fifteen to twenty-five minute
intervals to just get out any ideas in her head. She emphasized that she doesnt try to be
perfect in her drafts because she can fix those imperfections later; instead her first goal
is to just get her thoughts down on paper. Once her first draft is all compiled (which
usually takes several months), her finished article is around twenty-five to thirty pages
and is sent out to be peer reviewed as many as four times.

Reviewing
After completing the first draft, it can be as many as four to six months before Dr.
Glasper releases it. In the professional writing field that Dr. Glasper is in, there is often
no deadline other than her own internal deadline that she has to meet. This can make
the process or writing, revising, and publishing very lengthy. When she does send it out
to be reviewed, it first goes to her principal investigator (PI) and then to her peers. The
peer review process begins by having two peers who are familiar with her research
review her work. Because there is a chance they could be biased, they will usually bring
in one or two more peer reviewers to go over the article again. High ranking journals will
have even more peer reviewers, ranging from five to seven and possibly even more if
necessary.

Artifact Analysis
To finalize the findings of our interview, we read one of Dr. Glaspers more recent
published reports. This is crucial to our research because it grounds what we know
about Dr. Glaspers process in a final product. By reading the final article, we can see
how she executes her approach to scientific writing.
 We chose the article, Adult neurogenesis: Optimizing hippocampal function to
suit the environment, which was published by Dr. Glasper and her colleagues in the
journal Behavioural Brain Research in 2011. This article is 4 pages long, which is on the
briefer side of empirical journal articles. Doctoral psychology thesis papers, which often
follow similar formats to journal articles, can be hundreds of pages long. This goes to
show the wide range of formats that publications in the field can use.
The structure differs a bit from the classic scientific report, which normally
follows the sequence of Abstract, Introduction, Method, Results, and
Discussion. Other components, such as Participants or Limitations are often
common. The reason that this particular article deviates quite a bit from this format is
that this article proposes an understanding of neurogenesis that is based on the
literature created by Dr. Glasper and other researchers, instead of one isolated study.
Dr. Glasper chose to divide the report to follow the logical flow of her explanation, going
from each aspect of the proposed theories and examining the information we know
about each. Her headings are as follows: Abstract, Experience and adult
neurogenesis, New neurons as substrate for fine-tuning behavioral responses to the
environment, and Dorsal versus ventral hippocampus (Glasper, Schoenfeld, & Gould,
2011).
It is clear from reading the paper that Dr. Glasper has a very consistent approach
to field vocabulary. Audience is an important consideration in choosing what level of
vocabulary to use. Dr. Glaspers paper is specifically targeted to individuals familiar with
the basic jargon of neuroscience, so Dr. Glasper chooses not to define terms such as
neurogenesis, hippocampus, or neurons because she is assuming that the audience for
this article would already have at least a baseline knowledge of these terms, as they
would be considered integral concepts in her area of study.
That being said, Dr. Glaspers writing is not too haughty as to suggest intellectual
pretension. It is clear that this article is meant to inform clearly and concisely. There is
very little fluff which is perhaps why the article can afford to be so brief. Even
transitions serve to only further the readers understanding of each concept.
One strategy that Dr. Glasper uses frequently in the article is to bring up a
limitation or a contradiction in the data or literature, and then make sense of it with
theory, or by explaining certain confounds in the research process that could account for
the confusion. For example, after discussing two nearly opposing theories to anxiety
reduction through experiences that increase neurogenesis, she acknowledges that it is
difficult to reconcile these two sets of findings (Glasper, Schoenfeld, & Gould, 2011).
She then goes on to explain the different neuron theory that can account for this
paradox in neuron activity.
We also analyzed the information design component of the paper, as it
incorporates an explanatory graphic. The paper is written in serif font, perhaps Georgia,
as is this paper, because both are formal reports. This small choice helps to legitimize
journal articles. Whether or not the journal or Dr. Glasper herself made this decision, it
says a lot about the culture of written pieces in psychology and neuroscience.
Conversely, the labels in Dr. Glaspers Figure 1 are in sans serif font. The goal of
incorporating a graphic is to visually illustrate the rhetoric outlined in the article. Sans
serif font make the graphic easier to discern. The graphic is also very well designed as it
uses intuitive color coding (green to indicate a High-Reward situation, red to indicate
High-Threat) and an appropriate left-to-right flow of images to represent a
chronological sequence of circumstantial cause and neurological effect.
Its important to note that this brief report has fifty-six separate references to
support the suggestions outlined. This seems baffling, but keeping Dr. Glaspers writing
process in mind, it makes sense. Dr. Glasper, as noted in the interview, is constantly
keeping herself aware of new articles being published in her field. To write an effective
report, she must use her own research to form hypotheses, and then incorporate other
theories to flesh out the possible causes and predictors of these hypotheses. Even if
some literature contradicts the research that she conducts,s he must incorporate it into
her reports so as to be able to counter argue the research, or explore limitations in her
own research. Much of the time it takes to write a psychological paper is actually spent
researching and consolidating the findings, and the fact that Dr. Glasper was able to
make sense of and consolidate fifty-six soures into four pages just supports the idea that
she is well-versed in her field.
Inspecting this final report was instrumental in our investigation of Dr. Glasper
as a professional writer and as a researcher.

Discussion
Although we only interviewed one individual in particular in the field of scientific
professional writing, from our two interviews with Dr. Glasper we still managed to gain
quite a bit of insight into the field. From the information we gathered through our
research we learned what goes into the research and writing process of a scientific
professional writer, what skills are utilized in this field of writing, and the obstacles or
difficulties that can affect the writing process. These two short interviews alone gave us
so much information about our informant, Dr. Glasper, showing us the importance that
things like location or types of questions we ask serve. The next step we could take in the
research process to gain further insight into Dr. Glaspers processes would be to shadow
Dr. Glasper during a typical day of work, research, and writing. Although it would be
very difficult to schedule this, by following Dr. Glasper in a typical day, we would have a
firsthand look into how she balances her research and her writing and it would give us
an even greater understanding of the world of scientific professional writing.
 Works Cited

Glasper, E. R., Schoenfeld, T. J., & Gould, E. (2011). Adult neurogenesis: Optimizing
hippocampal function to suit the environment. Behavioural Brain
Research,227(2), 380-383. doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2011.05.013

Johnson-Eilola, J., & Selber, S. A. (2013). Solving problems in technical

communication. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Glasper, E. (2017, March 28th & 31st). Personal interview.

Glasper, E. (2017, April 15). Erica Glasper, PSYC, Psychology Department, University of
Maryland. Retrieved from https://psyc.umd.edu/facultyprofile/Glasper/Erica

Group Member Contributions

for Professor Szczepaniec-Bialas knowledge, NOT part of Ethnography
 Cecily Greene:

Aileen Wood:

Janae Thompson:

Erin Hill:
- Helped with small group tasks, like charter, schedule, etc.
- Interviewed Dr. Glasper with Aileen
- Located and cited Dr. Glaspers article (artifact)
- Analyzed Artifact, wrote Artifact Analysis Section
- Helped with overall edits and voice consistency throughout paper